I tried to sign up three times, but their account system apparently doesn't work, so I it appears I don't get to play

[edit] Holy cow! ... like 15 minutes after my very first attempt it finally emails me a confirmation link and it worked when I signed in this time! This is completely retarded coming from a "programming" club. Unbelievable. I got an activation email from my second attempt within seconds, and my first one arrives fifteen minutes later?! TF? I hope they don't decide to disqualify me now for having three accounts. [shakes head]

Well at least you're in it PMX! I really wanted to join in but I got slammed with (paying) projects. I did come up with what I think was a pretty clever strategy on the first round, but that's as far as I got

LOL, I was holding out uploading an update because KittyMac's score was very close to mine, so I hoped to see at least a match before updating. Of course, then I totally forgot about it and now I'm 1400th-ish and KittyMac 700th-ish!

Well, with the new score KittyMac got to play with OSC! I'll be uploading a new version this weekend to try and catch up.

I finally managed to upload an updated version, and now my score is between KittyMac's and OSC, but that's only after 17 matches. Since all scores were reset, it will take a while for scores to stabilize... so I thought I would mention that now when I'm not losing

Argh! 90% of what he mentioned was my approach too! Of course, about half of it ended up being TODOs comments in my final version...

He mentioned that the map change helped some bots and hurt others. I can definitely say it helped mine, because having more planets at the same distance from both players at the start is something my bot was rather good at. It uses a few "tricks":
1. Using a futureState(planet, turns), where turns == distance from planet to my starting planet-1, it finds all the neutral planets that are going to be taken over by the enemy (and gets how many enemy ships would be on it)
2. It sends an X amount of ships to those planets, with X equal or higher to: expected enemy ships at destination + destination growth rate (because I arrive a turn later) + 1
3. It doesn't send any ships on the first turn (KittyMac's bot apparently does the same!)

That way, an enemy bot may send 61 ships to take over a 60 neutral with growth rate 5, and a turn later I send just 7 ships and take it over a few turns later, right after his ships arrive

Another thing my bot does is figure out which of my planets are going to be taken over at or before turn X, where X is the distance from said planet to my "reinforcement" planet. Unlike with neutrals, in this case I don't want to purposely arrive "late", since if I arrive Z turns late I'd lose Z*planet growth rate*2 ships!

Nonetheless, that is the only real reinforcement aspect it has, since I didn't get to implement all my TODOs, the biggest of which was ranking planets (both mine and the enemy's) by weakness against a full-on all-planets attack. That would have made the reinforcement flow a lot more effective, by choosing reinforcement planets more wisely.